


Third Time Lucky

by JRGodwin



Series: Strangers in a strange land [1]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 19:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4403738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRGodwin/pseuds/JRGodwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah is stepping into her power as an adult and has to make a lot of lifechanging decisions. Jareth wants to help, but his definition of "help" is a little perverted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The first time

1.

When Sarah saw him again, she was struck by how short he was. But no, she'd grown taller. Jareth waited for her on the path to the dorms, dressed in a demure suit, a stark oddity to the college students who flowed around him in confusion, the way a boulder parts the river.

"You!" Sarah hissed. "You have no power over me!"

"I recall asking to be  _ **your**_  slave, not the inverse." His smile unfurled across his face and stretched like a cat. "You never forbade my own servitude. I obey the letter of the law, dearest, if not the spirit."  
  
_Son of a ..._  
  
The man was too damn smart for his own good. If he was a man. Which Sarah had decided long ago that he wasn't, no matter that he overwhelmed a room with pheromones. She'd been painfully young then, and hadn't understood the full extent of what he'd wanted. Now she was 18, and his desire back then was so obvious. Hindsight left her feeling stupid.  
  
_How was I supposed to know?_  she thought furiously.  _He kidnapped my brother. I was **fourteen!**_  
  
Sarah also saw for the first time how out of place he was. The world felt solid and made sense, from the backpack pulling at her shoulders to the kids throwing frisbee nearby on the green. It felt like a well oiled machine where all the pieces fit seamlessly together.  
  
In contrast, Jareth didn't make sense at all. Although he looked real, and students walked around him grumbling, Sarah got the impression he might vanish into the wind at a moment's notice, as if this reality couldn't keep a solid grip on him. His teeth were too long, and his gaze resembled mismatched buttons pulled from a drawer more than eyes, and his body was as crooked as his smile.  
  
That smile deepened as she stared at him, dumbfounded by his admission. "Cat got your tongue?" he asked, and he started to reach for her on reflex but then clearly thought better of it.  
  
"I don't want a Goblin King as a pet," she spat. "Go home, Jareth."  
  
He scoffed. "I said servitude, Sarah, not domesticity. But I'm not surprised you don't know the difference."  
  
She looked at him then, really  ** _looked_** , which surprised the both of them. She supposed Jareth had expected her to argue, or perhaps even beg. Instead she said, "I won Toby back and defeated you, Goblin King. You have no place here. Go home.  ** _Your_**  home, in the Labyrinth, just so we're clear."  
  
She was surprised at how calm she sounded, and how unafraid she felt. She knew who she was, and he couldn't change that.  
  
"Shame," Jareth murmured. He looked like a dog denied a ball, and then he was gone.


	2. The second time

2.

She knew breaking the news to Dad and Karen wouldn't go well, and for once, her gut instinct didn't disappoint. She waited until the next visit home, and quietly told them over dinner when Toby was out of the house.

Karen looked sad and disappointed, but her father was furious. "Drop out?" he demanded. "Absolutely not. Don't be ridiculous."

"Dad," she said patiently, "I know it's a big change, but-"

"This is not up for discussion!" he thundered. "A college education is the only thing they can never take away from you. Your mother and I gave you enough leeway when we agreed you could major in mythology. Mythology! Now you're telling me you want to piss it all away? And for what? Running away to San Francisco?"

Her voice was polite but firm, and for a moment, she was reminded of the command she'd levied at Jareth years earlier. "It's an amazing opportunity, Dad. A once in a lifetime opportunity. The startup has investors and $10 million to play with, and they need a marketing director. They asked me."

"I don't understand why a company is asking a college student to head their marketing."

"They need a storyteller," she said quietly. "I already wrote stuff for them that they loved. The CEO said she doesn't want anyone else. I can spend another two years in school, get a degree, and then spend a  ** _decade_**  trying to get a job this good, and it may never happen! If I leave now, I have a great job and a two year headstart on my classmates. It doesn't make sense to wait for a piece of paper when I can accomplish what I need to without it."

"I would have killed for that ' _piece of paper'_  when I was your age," her father said. "You're the first person in this family to go to college. I can't believe you're being this selfish, after all we've done for you."

Sarah dropped her napkin onto the table and stood up. "I'm going out."

"Sit  ** _down_** , young lady-!"

"You can't tell me what to do! I don't live here anymore!" she snapped, then reined herself in. "I'm sorry. Look, my flight's in two weeks. I made my decision."

She ran out of the house before they could stop her.

* * *

Her hometown was a dying little place on the outskirts of civilization, hours from the nearest metropolis and ten miles from the nearest post office. Hampstead had been a bustling suburb once, with a mall and a town center and a thriving industry. Then in the 1970s, the local factory had gone under and taken everything else with it. Growing up meant scouring grocery store shelves for non-brand names, and riding the bus 40 minutes each way to another district's school because the one in town shut down.

Sarah had made do. Her imagination helped, along with the otherworldly friends who had a habit of popping out of her bedroom mirror for an impromptu party.

When she came home to visit, she still ran into old schoolmates sometimes, kids she'd grown up with who never escaped and were destined to spend their lives hanging out on the same street corner. Hampstead seemed rougher around the edges. More storefronts had shut down in her absence, and you were more likely to hear police sirens than crickets lately, during the cooling autumn nights.

San Francisco was a whole new world. It meant stability, safety, comfort.  _I can have a life_ , Sarah thought.  _Maybe Toby can come live with me when he graduates. Give him a solid foundation. He won't get it here._

There was a surprising number of people on the street tonight. Sarah wondered if it was a protest - just the other week, the paper had talked about another gang shooting - but people were far too joyful for a protest. They carried children on their shoulders, not placards, and they ate cotton candy from paper cones.

Halloween was only a week away. Was it a festival? She tucked her hands into her pockets and followed the crowd toward the center of town.

There wasn't much of a town center nowadays, just the library and the grocery store, the police station and the clinic where Doc Bridges treated your cuts and scrapes. If you had a real emergency, you had to go to Saint Joe's fifteen miles up route ninety. But the clinic was good for flu and dispensing medication to recovering addicts. Heroin was big in town. The clinic stood next to the guts of a movie theater that showed Hollywood blockbusters during the day and pornos after 11pm.

She heard the party before she saw it. Even so, when she turned the corner of the library, Sarah stopped in her tracks at the flood of people who laughed, and ate, and played with firecrackers. On the village green, tents towered over the delapidated buildings, and artificial light cast long and lurid shadows on the pavement.

"A carnival?" Sarah whispered.

"Hey Williams," said a familiar voice. Officer James. He'd once pulled Karen's car out of a ditch, and had led DARE programs at the YMCA (for all the good  ** _that_**  had done). He walked up to Sarah holding a soft pretzel. "You home from school?"

"Yeah," she said. "Uh, I didn't know carnivals ever came to Hampstead."

He shrugged. "I didn't either. Grab a pretzel, they're good."

"I'll do that," she said, but she wasn't really listening. A thunderclap interrupted them both, and a streak of light exploded overhead. Fireworks. The crowd cheered, and a car alarm went off and was quickly silenced.

Suddenly, something in the darkness moved, too organic and alive to be a shadow, and then a dragon reared up over the carnival. It was a balloon, like the kind you saw on TV parading down Fifth Avenue at Thanksgiving, but it  ** _moved_**. It gnashed its teeth and blew a puff of smoke over the partygoers, and the crowd cheered again.

Officer James whistled. "Those're some special effects."

"They sure are, alright," she agreed, but her voice was soft and uncertain, and she moved quickly across the street to get a closer look. Dead leaves and ticket stubs crunched under her feet. A throng of people packed the entrance, but she got to the front of the line very quickly.

Black iron gates flanked the front of the tents, with stars shaped into the arch over the entrance. The whole effect was very whimsical, which made it strange. Whimsy just didn't  ** _happen_**  in her town.

"Step right up, ladies and gents!" called a barker at the entrance. "Right this way! Tickets out, please, tickets out."

"Where do I get a ticket?" Sarah asked. There wasn't a ticket booth in sight.

"And what's your name, miss?" said the barker. He was a small man with finely fitted clothes and a mask that just covered his eyes, which was unexpected. Sarah hadn't been to a carnival since she was very little, and Dad had taken her to a place outside Pittsburgh when they'd gone to visit Uncle Jack and Aunt Sue. The carnies had worn vibrant colors, even the ones not dressed like clowns. This guy was louder than his clothes and looked ready for a business meeting, and his accent was strange, but she couldn't place it. Definitely not from around here, that was all.

"Sarah," she said, deciding to humor him.

"Ah! Special price of admission for you, miss. What is your heart's desire?"

Sarah frowned. His question didn't make sense. None of this made sense.  _My heart's desire? The job in San Francisco, for one thing. Who asks that?_

The crowd was getting impatient behind her. She could feel hundreds of eyes boring into her back. "I-I don't know," she blurted. "I just want to be me, I guess."

The words sounded dumb as soon as they left her mouth, but the barker reacted as if she'd won the lotto. He stepped aside with a triumphant flourish. " _Mais bien sûr, mademoiselle, et avec grand plaisir! Permettez-moi de vous accueillir au Carnaval de rêves perdus. Entrez-vous, je vous en prie._  And may your journey be very fruitful, indeed."

 _O-Okay_ , she thought with a very shaky grin, but she just ducked her head shyly and walked inside.

* * *

She had to hand it to whoever was in charge: this carnival was something else. She saw performers breathing fire, and shy adults pulled onstage to dance with people who didn't look like people at all, and booths where participants had to fight trolls and walk on water (which of course couldn't be true, but the illusions were so  ** _real_**.)

The light here wasn't so good, and you had to make your way by the faint lightbulbs overhead (though the harder she looked, they more they seemed to move, and she realized they weren't lightbulbs at all but faeries).

"What a strange place," she murmured aloud. Of course magic carnivals had to exist.  ** _Of course._**  She was 20 years old and still got regular visits from Ludo, Hoggle and Sir Didymus. Why shouldn't magic exist outside of the Labyrinth? Why shouldn't it visit dying little hometowns like hers, where the only decent jobs were with the local welders union or the Litchfield maximum security facility off the highway?

 _We probably need magic more than anybody_ , she thought ruefully. The idea that magic could infiltrate such a desperate place made her feel curiously warm and satiated, as if she'd just eaten a good meal. She felt hopeful.

A strange melody interrupted her thoughts. It was a haunting tune that reminded Sarah of funerals, and it ran a cold finger down her spine.  _What ...?_

There weren't as many kids running around underfoot here, and she'd left the busier part of the carnival with all the performers. Now she stood in a quiet lane in front of a haunted house. It was a crooked little building, in a crooked little place. She liked it immediately, even though it put her on edge.

"One please?" she asked the masked person guarding the door. She couldn't tell their gender, and they silently waved her inside.

Definitely a haunted house. The front salon had cages with (masked?) monsters in it, and a hallway up to the second floor had a ghost that dogged her every footstep and breathed down her neck, and the second floor had a library with books that flung themselves across the room and forced her to duck and run.

Finally she entered a pitch black room and waited, anxious and jittery, until a light slowly came on. "Figures," she said with good humor.

It was a room of mirrors. She made revolting faces in the first mirror she saw, and recoiled when her reflection stayed stuck that way.  _Whoaaaaaaa ... cool!_

What else was in this place? It was a maze of reflections as far as the eye could see, and she wandered past mirror after mirror, sometimes backtracking to find her way. Some of the mirrors made her tall, some made her short, others showed her in rags or beautiful clothes or sporting feathered wings or showed her hair on fire but not burning her.

Her reflection morphed from mirror to mirror: she was a police officer, a doctor, a botanist, an artist, a theater usher, a bodyguard, a mother, a coach, a pilot, a clown. Some of the reflections made her nervous. In one, her haggard face was covered in sores like she'd seen on Andrew Mobley when he'd started doing meth in 12th grade. In another, she saw a funeral casket.

And in another, she had no reflection, as if she didn't exist at all.

"Okay, this place is starting to creep me out," she muttered, rubbing her arms. "How do I get out of here?"

Suddenly, the path spilled her out into a circle of mirrors, and Sarah found herself staring at a dozen reflections, some of them gruesomely disorted. She made a face at herself and watched her reflections grimace back. "Cute. But where's the exit?"

"Sometimes the way forward is the way back. I thought you knew this."

Sarah whirled around, but she was alone. "Who's there?"

Jareth stepped out from the opposite side of one frosty glass and leaned nonchalantly against the frame with a smile that seemed all teeth, and Sarah's heart dropped into her shoes.

"I should have guessed," she said with remarkable calm. "Who else would be behind a magic carnival?"

"I'm touched by your faith in me," he said. Gone was the demure suit she'd last seen him in. But he'd abstained from his familiar black armor. Now he wore fitted jeans, and an Alice in Chains t-shirt, and his hair was long and unkept but not nearly as big as she remembered. It was wavy and tucked away neatly behind his ears. He might not have been out of place at a coffee shop or a rock concert.

Still crooked, she thought, but not nearly as thin as she remembered. He was lean but not skinny, not at all. She saw the definition of his muscles through the shirt, and she forced herself to keep her eyes on his face.

"Going grunge?" she asked. "It's a better look on you than the armor."

Jareth laughed. It was a racuous laugh, one which had terrified her when she was fourteen and raised all the hair on her arms right then, only she didn't think now it had anything to do with fear. "Oh Sarah, let it never be said you're not forthright. I always appreciated that about you."

"What do you want?"

"Getting right down to brass tacks, are we?"

"If you're after Toby-"

"-I can't have him," Jareth said firmly. "Yes, you made that quite clear last time. You needn't fear. Your brother doesn't interest me, sweet lad that he is."

"You can't have me either," she said quickly.

Jareth tsked. "Yes, let's talk about you," he said softly, and he braced himself against both sides of the mirror and looked at her. Really  ** _looked_** , and it was the same look she'd gotten from Mr. Hendricks, her guidance counselor, when she'd told him she was thinking about the local community college and he'd looked down his nose at her and said,  _ **Sarah**_ _, we both know you can do better that_ _ **that**_ _..._

"Let's talk about what you're missing," Jareth continued, and if it wasn't for her past experience with him, she almost would have thought he sounded sincere. She cocked her head at him.

He sucked his teeth and rapped a finger (no gloves) against the frame on his side of the mirror, with the air of an annoyed pedestrian waiting for the bus. He looked like he was going to stay silent and thoughtful, but then he said, "I hope you go to San Francisco. I really do."

She tasted bile at the back of her throat. "How can you possibly know about that?"

"What don't I know about you?" he asked with a flick of the wrist. "I told you once: everything I did, I did for you. I'm the Lord of Dreams. What  ** _don't_**  I know about you, Sarah? It's my job to know your dreams. It's what I was made to do."

"Uh huh." She didn't even sound convinced to her own ears. "And you just wanted to show up and offer me life advice, is that it?"

"I was very sincere in my last offer to you," he said softly. "You and I both know you've been ... dissatisfied."

And she knew  ** _exactly_**  what he meant, and felt her face flame red to the tips of her ears, and if she hoped for a carefree denial, she was sorely disappointed and too embarassed to even pretend otherwise. "That's n-none of your business," she stuttered, but her throat was closing up, and she didn't know what to  ** _say_**  ...

She stood closer to the mirror than she'd thought, because Jareth suddenly reached through it and cupped her cheek, and she couldn't move. "You call upon those nitwits of mine whenever you need them," he murmured. "Of course I know about that. I know everything that happens in my kingdom and with my subjects. They keep your imagination alive. I could have stopped them, but I never did, because I've never denied you anything."

She was trembling and couldn't look him in the face, and he was closer than ever now, because he leaned into her ear. "You invite your friends in so you can remember how to stay a child. You need balance. I can help you know what it's like to be a woman."

"I don't need your help for that," she said, but it was a quiet protest, without any bite to it.

"No, you've done well for yourself. But there's so much more to growing up than professional success." He lifted her chin and made her look at him. She was startled by the hunger in his eyes. "Let me in. Command me."

"You're not serious," she whispered.

"Command me and I'll show you just how serious I am," he insisted.

 _This isn't real. I've lost my mind._  In her shock, she realized she'd covered his hand with hers, holding it against her cheek. What exactly was he asking? How far was he willing to go? And then he must have seen the dawning realization in her eyes, because he kissed her on the corner of her mouth.

It was a chaste kiss, really, without much heat. But it was an  ** _adult_**  kiss, and she'd kissed enough boys to know the difference. When she opened her mouth to gasp, he kissed her there, too. He had a nice mouth, and a lot of passion, and without thinking she opened her mouth wider and let him in. She tasted heat, and she clasped the sides of his face, suddenly desperate for him to stay with her, and he groaned into her mouth as if a blade had gone right through him. It was just this side of too much, and Sarah's eyes welled with tears.

And then he tilted his head, and she tasted tongue. He was making the strangest noises: hungry, needy, excited noises.

She broke the kiss, desperate for air, and they clutched each other with fingers gone thick and useless. Jareth leaned uncomfortably out of the mirror as if he was about to fall, and she thought it strange that he didn't come through all the way into her world.

"Please," he said, and his voice was rough, and it was the first time she'd ever heard him say  ** _please_**  to anyone, let alone meant it.

She couldn't stop trembling, and he took the opportunity to nuzzle her jawline and place a kiss at her pulse point, and she almost lost her head completely.  _You have ... have no ... p-p-power ..._

Sarah dragged Jareth away from her throat by his hair. It shocked even her, but she had the distinct impression that he enjoyed the way she manhandled him. "What are the rules?" she demanded.

"Rules?" he asked, and  ** _THERE_**  was the Jareth she remembered, because his expression aimed for innocence but crashed and burned about five miles short of it. Apparently Jareth could do sincere, and he could even be affectionate, but innocent just wasn't in his blood.

"I'm not putting myself or my family in danger again," she said.

"Who said anything about danger?" he asked huskily. He licked his lips, and his hungry eyes flickered back to her mouth, and her pulse jumped again.

"No." She pushed him away, and he looked more startled by the word than her rough treatment of him. "Nothing is worth losing everything again. My answer is no."

He surprised her by not leaving right away, but leaned against the frame and regarded her with an intense stare that made her feel like she was being split wide open. His face was shockingly thoughtful beneath the longing, and when he reached out to her again, there was now glass between them as if it had always been there.

"Don't let anything stop you from San Francisco," he said. "And if you change your mind, call on me."

* * *

To be continued


	3. The third time

3.  
  
San Francisco, it turned out, was absolutely the right choice, but it was harder getting there than expected.  
  
When she returned from the carnival, her parents weren't speaking to her, and she cut short her visit home altogether. She spent the next two weeks finalizing her affairs, and getting an official leave of absence from the university, so she could keep her scholarship and easily return in case she changed her mind later.  
  
She didn't think she would, though.  
  
Finding an apartment in San Francisco was trickier. She finally found a place overlooking Lake Merced, which was the closest she could get to downtown without spending $3k for a studio. Haggling over the rent was a lot of back and forth with the broker, and she needed an advance on her first paycheck for the move, but her new boss was very obliging.  
  
All told, she was moved in within a month. Her first order of business was connecting the electricity and getting a cat. She named the cat Alexander the Great, and the cat clearly thought he lived up to the name, judging from the way he strutted. He reminded her a lot of Jareth, in some ways.  
  
By the second month, she was settling in well at work and designing a new marketing campaign for the company. By the next, she'd joined a local improv group and made some girlfriends. The city had plenty of places to go and things to eat, and whenever she got tired of the city, there was the lake with its bike trails and picnic spots. People were upbeat, not afraid, and it was easy to socialize. It was about as different from Hampstead as it could get, which she liked.  
  
Her first improv performance was a hit, and a few weeks later she was invited to tell stories at a festival ... which was how she found herself standing onstage and performing a one-woman show called  _Labyrinth_  to an eager audience of a hundred small children. They shrieked with laughter when she made goblin noises, and they cheered when she defeated the wicked Goblin King.  
  
_Piece of cake_ , she thought ruefully as she gazed out over the exuberant audience.  
  
***  
  
Dating left a lot to be desired.  
  
It wasn't that she couldn't find men. San Francisco swarmed with them. And it wasn't that they weren't interesting, because they were. And it wasn't that they didn't know how to be sweet, because they definitely did.  
  
But she was reminded of how different she was on a third date with a guy named Mike, who had seen a few of her performances and even read a draft of her novel. "Where do you come up with these amazing stories?" he asked eagerly. "It's like ... wow, what an imagination. You'd almost think it's all real."  
  
_But it **is**  real,_ she'd thought sadly as she poked at the tuna tartare on her plate. The sadness suckerpunched her. She didn't expect fellow grown-ups to believe in faeries and magic and things that went bump in the night, but she hadn't counted on how isolating it would be to live a magical life in a mundane world.  
  
***  
  
Dad started talking to her again around the six month mark, thanks in part to constant pressure from Karen.  
  
He visited her that spring, and Sarah took him on the cable cars, and led him around Lands End and the Palace of Fine Arts. She showed him her studio apartment, which was small but homey, and she took him on a tour of her office and introduced him to the CEO. Samantha wouldn't stop praising Sarah. "I know how hard it must have been to let Sarah come out here," Sam enthused. "We're really lucky to have her."  
  
"We're real proud of her," her father said, and Sarah was surprised to see he meant it.  
  
On his last day in town, he took her for ice cream like they'd done together when she was a little girl, and they sat overlooking the Bay while they ate their cones. "I'm sorry about the way I left," Sarah said. "I could have done it a lot better. I know me going to college means ... meant a lot to you."  
  
Her father sighed. "Sarah, did I ever tell you how I left home?"  
  
No.  
  
No, he hadn't.  
  
All Sarah knew about her father's childhood was that Grandma died young, and Dad dropped out of the 10th grade and bought a one-way bus ticket to Hampstead, where he worked in the mines and slept on Lee Bostwick's couch until he could afford a room at Mrs. Everett's boarding house.  
  
Sarah didn't remember any of this herself. Dad had worked his way up to management by the time Sarah was born. She'd only ever seen him come home in a suit, not covered in coal dust, and by then they'd bought the house on Oak Street, which wasn't a mansion but it was sure nicer than the trailer park where her childhood friends Cindy Smith and Kayla Peterson grew up and survived off of foodstamps in the wintertime.  
  
"My father was a bastard," Dad said. "You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but it's the truth. He was a loveless, violent drunk who couldn't control his temper or his hands. Drove me from home when I was fifteen. Didn't lay eyes on the place again until I went back to bury him. The night I left, your grandpa put a knife to my face and told me if I tried leaving, he'd gut me. I punched him and ran. The next time I saw him was years later and he was in a casket. It was the most peaceful I'd ever seen him."  
  
The breeze drifing off the bay was getting cold, and she'd forgotten about the ice cream melting in her hands. Sarah stared at her father and said nothing.  
  
"I wanted you to have a better childhood than I did, and it went along okay until your mom left," he continued. "I was mad about that, though it meant I got to meet your stepmom. Figured the least I could do was make sure you grew up right and got an education. I didn't want you or your kids to have to go through what I did, and I thought college would make sure of that. Now I'm here in San Francisco and seeing you did just fine, and maybe you don't need college after all."  
  
She felt like she was strangling. "Dad, why didn't you ever say anything?"  
  
He shrugged. "What was I gonna say? Being a father means protecting your kids, and sometimes that means keeping your trap shut. You didn't need to hear about it."  
  
"I might have done things different if you'd told me."  
  
"But you didn't need to, baby girl. We both left home cuz we had to make our own way. Now I'm just glad you didn't have to punch your old man to do it."  
  
"Almost had to," she muttered with a grin.  
  
"Cheeky monkey," he retorted, but he was smiling.  
  
***  
  
She never went back to college.  
  
By the following year, she had an agent for her novel and several publishers sniffing around (along with a pile of rejections). But Sarah wasn't worried. You had to expect failure along the way to success, after all, and she continued with the dogged detemination that had gotten her to the center of the Labyrinth.  
  
She got a promotion at work and was now CMO, which was unheard of for a 22-year old back home but not uncommon in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Alexander the Great ate an electrical outlet cover and needed emergency surgery, and the goblins set fire to the curtains over her sink. She removed both curtains and outlet covers in the apartment and figured the goblins would figure out the hard way not to stick forks in strange crevices. They seemed like sturdy creatures, especially with the way Jareth had treated them.  
  
She missed music, missed its rhythm and the way it moved through her body, so she signed up for violin lessons. She missed dance too, but salsa didn't grab her interest and she didn't think she could hack ballet.  
  
There was a flier at Whole Foods advertising pole dancing classes.  _I must be nuts_ , she thought, but she pulled it off the wall anyway and stuffed it furtively into her purse as if any moment Karen would walk up behind her.  
  
The pole dancing class had no mirrors, which was a relief. Sarah didn't think she could stand seeing herself flopping around and falling off a pole. Fact was, pole dancing was less about working out and more about having fun, and by the end of her second or third class, she and her classmates were shrieking and twirling about on their poles like kids at a merry-go-round.  
  
"It beats ballet," she told the girls when they met up for their post-workout dinners.  
  
"And it helps your dating life," Rebecca added with a wink, and Mayumi and Kirsten and Andi had all laughed.  
  
But while Sarah enjoyed dancing, it didn't make dating easier. She had a date that week with Raj (who stood her up), and a date with Jeff (who she didn't feel any chemistry with at all), and a date with Marcos (who seemed promising but it was way too early to tell). She liked that Marcos knew who Tolkien was and made art for a living. He sculpted the statues you saw on the city's buildings.  
  
_He'd freak if I introduced him to Ludo_ , she thought. Or the goblins. It would be hard explaining anything of magic to Marcos, assuming they got to the point where he was spending time at her place and would need to know why the shadows moved of their own accord and little explosions happened from time to time.  
  
***  
  
Sarah got two offers on her book in June. It was the same week San Francisco had an uncharacteristic heat wave and the AC went out in her building, which meant sleeping with the windows open and editing her book in front of a fan. Her sweat stained the pages and made the ink run.  
  
She glared at the shadows darting behind the bookshelf. "Did you guys kill the AC in the building?" she asked the room.  
  
Silence. Then: " ** _NO!_** " And a chorus of childish giggles.  
  
_Now I know why Jareth enjoys kicking them_. She dropped her manuscript on the coffee table and wiped the sweat from her brow, thinking. "Jareth, I need you."  
  
The room was silent, but she felt the air shift, and then Jareth was sitting in the armchair across from her as if he'd never been away. He wore jeans and a button-up shirt and Converse sneakers, and his hair was shorter but messy, as if he'd just rolled out of bed. He would not have been out of place in the CEO's office of any startup in the Valley, except for the thin leather gloves on his hands, and his star-kissed hair, and those strange eyes, which Sarah swore were gateways into another world.  
  
"Music to my ears," he said with the same shark smile that she remembered. "You know how to grab my attention, don't you? Hello, this is nice." He looked appreciatively about the little apartment. His smile back at her was less predatory, more satisfied, the way Alexander the Great looked when he got into the kitty treats cabinet. "You did it. I knew you would."  
  
She shrugged with more nonchalance than she felt. "What can I say? I'm stubborn."  
  
"Yeeees, I've experienced that firsthand."  
  
She smiled. She wasn't apologetic about that.  
  
Jareth sniffed with more mockery than malice. "In any case, how can I be of service?"  
  
Her smiled faded. Admittedly, she hadn't thought this far ahead. "Your offer," she said slowly, but Jareth said, "Yes?" a little too quickly, and then the air between them lost whatever playfulness it had a moment before.  
  
"Why do you only come when I call?" she asked instead.  
  
"Because you defeated me," he said wearily, "and I have no place in this world save when you anchor me here. I cannot stay without your approval, anymore than you can stay in mine. We are equals now, in ways that few of your fellow mortals will ever understand."  
  
"I don't want to stay in your world," she insisted.  
  
"You needn't," he answered, and she was taken aback by this. Not stay Underground? What had it all been about then, with him kidnapping Toby and asking her to stay? He must have seen the confusion in her face because he added, "My original offer said nothing about leaving your world forever. Servitude isn't contingent on location, you know."  
  
"You sure are interested in this servitude thing."  
  
"Everything I've ever done has been by your leave, Sarah," he said softly, and she sucked her lower lip and watched him watch her do it. "Mine is a strange little world with few imaginative colleagues in it. It gets ... challenging. I think you understand where I'm coming from."  
  
She did. It surprised her how much she did. She thought of the dates with men who would all have heart attacks if they realized the stuff of their childhood nightmares was all real, and her parents, who loved her but were so practical, and Toby, who might forget about goblins altogether when he grew up and would probably work a red eye shift at Litchfield if she didn't rescue him from Hampstead the second he graduated high school.  
  
It was frustrating sometimes, being different. It made a person crave a kindred spirit.  
  
Yes, she understood the Goblin King a little better than most people would have, assuming they ever knew of his existence. She was perhaps the only person who'd ever defeated him too, and in his gaze she saw annoyance and arousal in equal measure.  
  
"Jareth," she said, "come here."  
  
He smiled then, a pleased self-indulgent smile, but he joined her on the couch and let her place his hand on her cheek.  _I can't believe I'm doing this_ , she thought, and for the first time she could remember in recent memory, she felt a little afraid when she met his eyes. "I want you to kiss me the way you did that day with the mirrors."  
  
He chuckled but obeyed, kissing her softly on the lips, once, twice, thrice. The third time was the firmest of all, and he bit her bottom lip as if claiming her. A bolt of liquid fire shot straight to her groin and made her gasp. "You built a lovely little kingdom while I was away," he whispered. "Kingdom as great as mine, indeed. I couldn't be more proud, darling."

The next time he kissed her, she tasted tongue, and the heat between her legs became unbearable. He made a startled sound as she pushed him against the back of the sofa and straddled his lap, but he smiled at the sight of her above him. But then she **_moved_** against him, against his erection, and his eyes fluttered shut as he bucked up into the cradle of her hips. The friction was delicious. She moved again, and his hands flew from her throat to her hips, holding her firmly in place.

He trembled just a little then, and his face looked ... surprised? hungry? lost? She couldn't tell, but she cradled his face like he was precious ( _he is_ , her mind whispered) and said, "Kiss me again."

Whatever restraint remaining snapped. He yanked her tight against his chest, and his next kiss seared her mouth. Her mouth was full of him, and so was her nose, and Sarah thought she'd never tasted anything so good in her life. It was impossible to get closer, she could feel the blood pulsing in his groin through two sets of clothing, yet her mind frantically told her she wasn't closed enough, no matter that Jareth was crushing her in his embrace as if trying to fuse them together.

They kissed like that for a while, their breath mingled and frantic as they moved together, each eager to feel more of the other. Sarah became desperate ( _I need to feel more of him_ ) and peeled off his gloves, which made him smile against her mouth and unbutton her shirt with startling ease. The sudden feel of naked hands cupping her breasts made her gasp; she'd forgotten to wear a bra that morning. 

"You have gorgeous breasts," he murmured, and his breath was ragged against her mouth. He ran his thumbs over her nipples and the next time they moved together, it was agonizingly slow, and when she tried unbuttoning his shirt, she got impatient and ripped it down the front. Buttons made a satisfying popping sound as they went. Jareth laughed into her mouth, delighted and drunk with desire, but his breath became ragged as skin pressed against skin.

"I have wanted this," he sighed, "for a very long time."

And then he bit her throat.

Sarah froze, stunned by the sensation, but Jareth increased the pressure as her delight became obvious. The ache in her turned vicious -- _I might die from this_  -- and her hips took on a life of their own.

He was doing something, reaching between them. She made a desperate sound of disappointment, because it meant separating from him, but then he was unbuttoning her jeans and giving her a knowing look as his hand cupped her through her underwear, and then she thought she really  ** _would_** die. She settled on his hand and whimpered as the heat built at the base of her spine.  
  
"Sarah," he gasped against the delicate spot at her temple. "Breathe." He was almost past speaking, but he coached her anyway, gently, moving her hips with his own. Gentle breath against her cheek, like a kiss.  
  
And she obeyed. She breathed deep through her mouth, and her hips moved of their own accord, as she fucked herself on his hand. The pressure at the base of her spine was going to kill her, and then finally it felt like it did. The world contracted to a pinprick of light. The shudder that shot through her body squeezed her heart like a vise, and the world flashed white. All the stars went out.

When she could see again, the look on Jareth's face was at once triumphant and desperate.  
  
"Move your hand," she begged. She didn't recognize her own voice.  
  
So they slid tightly back together again, tight in each other's embrace. He'd been making excited sounds against her mouth, but now he grunted like an animal as she pinned his hands to the couch behind his head again, as their movements became measured and unified, as she whispered fiendishly in his ear, "Slow, Jareth." But he was too far gone for that, and he groaned into her neck as if she'd shot him.  
  
They moved together perfectly, and Sarah shuddered as sheer joy crackled through her body again, this time from toes to scalp. Her heart actually skipped a beat and (for a second) stopped. It was so intense that it was almost pain, and then she shuddered again and thought she might black out.

Jareth cried out as if mortally wounded. His face went slack in blissful relief, and she thought she'd never seen such a beautiful sight. His hands escaped her grip and tangled in her hair, drew her tight against him, as if he couldn't bear to draw himself away.   
  
"Command me," he groaned, the words nearly lost against her mouth. His skin was hot, his spine damp through the remains of his ruined shirt. When she touched him there, he trembled, and when she gripped his hair, he trembled again and buried his face in her neck. "Please. Command me."  
  
"Stay," she said.  
  
***  
  
_The end_


End file.
